A cruel story runs on wheels and every hand oils the wheels as they run.

— Ouida

An easygoing husband is the one indispensable comfort of life.

— Ouida

Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been. It had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and for faith no fulfillment.

— Ouida

Fame has only the span of the day they say. But to live in the hearts of people-that is worth something.

— Ouida

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.

— Ouida

He crept up, and touched the face of the boy. "Didst thou dream that I should be faithless and forsake thee? I— a dog?" said that mute caress.

— Ouida

He mistook, as the cleverest men often do mistake, in underrating the cruelty of women.

— Ouida

I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.

— Ouida

Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.

— Ouida

In the violent scorn of her revolted pride, of her indignant honor, had she forgotten a lowlier yet harder duty left undone? In her contempt and dread of yielding to mere amorous weakness had she stifled and denied the cry of pity, the cry of conscience? To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite. To forgive wrongs darker than death or night. To defy power which seems omnipotent. To love and live to hope till hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates. Neither to change, nor falter nor repent. This had been the higher, diviner way which she had missed, this obligation from the passion of the past which she had left unfulfilled, unaccepted. Now the misgiving arose in her whether she had mistaken arrogance for duty; whether, cleaving so closely to honor she had forgotten the obligation of mercy.

— Ouida